president will not go to hawaii to avoid the fiscal cliff and ever continue we get past the fiscal cliff, round two is in a couple of months when congress has to raise the debt ceiling to keep the country from default. trace? >>trace: thank you, wendell, from the white house. joining us now is columnist for the congressional newspaper "the hill." i have to go on what wendell says, if you are speaker boehner and you walk to the house of representatives members and say there is kind of a deal but no spending cuts. how does that fly? >>reporter: that is the problem. what you see are words of hope from the republican leader on the senate side how we are very close to what has to be fixed, the tax rates. he is trying to put a positive spin on that. we knew they would be fixed. the worry all along was, were we going to see a replacement for the draconian sequestration cuts everyone hated on both sides of the aisle for 17 months. here we are, in the final stretch, the 11th hour, surprise, both have given on the tax issue because neither could stand to go over the fiscal cliff, the tax cliff but